LeRoy Hurd named Southland Conference 2000s Co-Player of the Decade on Wednesday

Courtesy: UTSA AthleticsRelease: 03/06/2013

Courtesy UTSA Athletics

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FRISCO — Former UTSA star LeRoy Hurd was named Southland Conference 2000s Co-Player of the Decade and Devin Brown and McEverett Powers were selected to the All-Decade Team, the league office announced on Wednesday as part of its year-long 50th Anniversary commemoration.

Hurd, who shared Co-Player of the Decade honors with Southeastern Louisiana's Ricky Woods, was the 2004 Southland Player of the Year after being tabbed the league’s Newcomer of the Year in 2003. The Moss Point, Miss., native earned all-conference honors in both seasons with the Roadrunners, including first-team accolades in 2004. The 6-foot-7 forward helped UTSA finish 19-14 and earn a share of the 2004 Southland Regular Season Championship with an 11-5 mark. Hurd also was named Southland Tournament Most Valuable Player after leading the Roadrunners to the title and automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament, where they bowed out to top-seed Stanford in the first round. He also was named an honorable mention All-American by The Associated Press following his final campaign.

Hurd ranks 14th overall and third among two-year players on UTSA’s career scoring chart with 1,027 points and his 18.7 career scoring average stands third in program history. He scored 639 points as a senior, which is the second-highest total in school annals, while averaging 19.4 points per game. Hurd’s 440 career rebounds places him 13th on UTSA’s all-time list and second among two-year players. He averaged eight rebounds during his career, which is tied for second, and he also appears in the career top 10 for free throw percentage (2nd/77.3 percent), free throws (6th/272) and field goal percentage (8th/48.6 percent). His 264 boards during the 2003-04 season rank fourth on the school’s single-season chart.

Meanwhile, Brown and Powers were four-year letterwinners from 1998-2002. The duo helped UTSA win 66 games during their four seasons. The Roadrunners captured the 1999 Southland Tournament crown and earned the program’s second-ever NCAA Tournament appearance during their freshmen campaign.

Brown is the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,922 points and he is the only Roadrunner to garner first-team all-conference honors three times (2000-02). His 18.3 career scoring average ranks fourth in school history and he also appears in the UTSA career top 10 in field goals (2nd/637), free throws (2nd/478), rebounds (3rd/751), steals (3rd/184), 3-pointers (4th/176), starts (4th/92), rebounds per game (6th/7.2), free throw percentage (7th/73.3 percent) and assists (8th/283). The San Antonio native’s single-game career high of 39 points set against TCU on Dec. 2, 2000, is the sixth-best performance in school history. Brown, a 6-foot-5 guard who is one of two Roadrunners with their jersey retired, was the Southland Freshman of the Year and a second-team all-league pick in 1999.

Powers is one of three Roadrunners to be named Southland Player of the Year, as he collected that award as a senior in 2002. He is the program’s only Academic All-American after earning second-team honors in his final season. The 6-foot-7 forward from Memphis, Tenn., ranks second on UTSA’s career rebounds list with 760 and he is fifth in school annals with 1,307 career points. He also ranks in the career top 10 in games played (2nd/115), free throws (3rd/459), blocked shots (3rd/105), field goal percentage (6th/53.1 percent), rebounds per game (8th/6.6), field goals (8th/424) and starts (8th/75). Powers set the single-season record for field goal percentage by shooting 64 percent (80-for-125) as a freshman and he holds the school and Convocation Center single-game standards for most free throws made (20) and attempted (26) against UT Arlington on Jan. 24, 2002.

In the last two weeks, the Southland has announced the All-Decade Teams for the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

To best assess the candidate pool for the all-decade team, the Southland developed a metric that analyzed numerous elements of a student-athlete’s performance and value within the league at the time. Most notably, the conference honored “real-time” factors such as all-conference selection by coaches and a player’s statistical performance among his peers at the time. Furthermore, other components of selection including a player’s effort toward helping his team win a championship or finish near the top of the conference, whether he earned individual honors from the league, participated in postseason tournaments and/or was drafted by the NBA or ABA at the time.